Yoast is the company behind a brilliant plugin for Wordpress who also consult with some of the biggest brands on the planet including Facebook, Ebay and the Guardian. Here we share a recent post on Search Engine Optimisation together with a number of their links should you wish to discover more.

SEO is the acronym for Search Engine Optimisation. It’s the practice of optimising websites to make them reach a high position in Google’s – or another search engine’s – search results. SEO focuses on rankings in the organic (non-paid) search results. In this post, I’ll answer the question “What is SEO?” and I’ll explain how we perform SEO at Yoast.

Google’s algorithm

In order to make web pages appear in high positions in the search results, SEO tries to shape a website according to Google’s algorithm. Although Google’s algorithm remains secret, over a decade of experience in SEO has resulted in a pretty good idea about the important factors.

In our view, the factors in Google’s algorithm can be divided into two categories, which determine the ranking of your website together:

1 On-page SEO factors

On-page SEO factors are all the things you can influence on your own website. All kinds of technical aspects of your website are important for the chances of your website to rank in the search engines. WordPress actually is a rather SEO-friendly platform. Combined with our Yoast SEO plugin, most technical challenges are covered.

2 Off-page SEO factors

Next to on-page SEO factors, there are off-page SEO factors. These off-page SEO factors are a bit more difficult to influence, though. The most important off-page factor are the links to your site. The more (relevant) sites link to your website, the higher your ranking in Google will be.

Another off-page factor is the competition or the niche of your specific website. In some niches, it is much harder to rank, than in other niches. The competitiveness of your market therefore also has a large influence on your chances to rank.

Yoast on “What is SEO?”

At Yoast, we believe in what we call holistic SEO. SEO should never be a trick. It should be a sustainable long-term strategy. Using tricks in order to fit Google’s algorithm only works in the short run. Google’s mission is to organise the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful. Google wants to show their users the best result for a specific keyword. If you want to rank for that keyword, you should simply try to be the best result.

Our goal is to provide flexible, affordable and effective marketing to businesses, acting as your in-house marketing team at a fraction of the cost. Keep your marketing needs under one roof and benefit from a team approach.